But not the Common, called Quick-silver by name.

Yet the difficulty is not over when once it is known that the whole Secret consisteth in
Mercury; for what more frequent among the Sophisters than to cry, Our Mercury, &c. and
yet in the Work of Nature they are as blind as Moles? The cause is, for that Nature hath
produced a Mineral Juice in the bowels of the Earth, which doth answer to most of the
Philosophical Descriptions of their Water; as namely, that it is mineral, quick, current,
without humectation, ponderous, and the like; which when the vulgar Alchymists read,
they apply it, to this naughty Mercury, which for inward Qualities hath nothing in it like
ours.
Some there are, who trusting to the Sentence of most of the Wise Men who have written
concerning this Art, do reject Mercury vulgar in word, when as indeed they dote as much
upon it as others, whenas by their mock-purgations they handle Mercuries divers ways by
Sublimation, Precipitation, Calcination Manual, even to a black substance, like to Soot or
Lamp-black, by distillation from sundry Faeces, after grinding with Vinegar, by
Calcination with Waters-fort, by Lotions innumerable, changing Mercury into sundry
forms, and after quickening him: By all which Operations they imagine themselves
secure of the Secret of our Mercury, whenas all such ways indeed are but Sophisms; and
yet Mercury so abused is one and the same vulgar Mercury.
So that upon this Rock more have stumbled than upon any other, & yet will stumble, till
they know how to distinguish our Mercury from Common, and our preparations from that
of the vulgar Sophisters, which have no likeness one to another.